Introducing The 2013 Series 7 Chronos with AMD HD8870M!

Well I'd rather buy an updated version with Haswell and 16gb of ram. Just to be future proof.

 

trust intel, they will delay haswell as well

 

Do you have gaming experience with the 8770 yet? Or any links to prove that it's a sucky card? I OWN the laptop (4 days now) and use it everyday. Just finished 2 older games on it (Half Life 2 and Witcher 2) and played both games at full 1080p. From my understanding, the 8770 is more comparable to Nvidia 650M which is quite a decend card in itself. For crying out loud, ATI/Samsung haven't even released the full blown driver yet for the 8XXX cards yet so your statement is based on broscience and Mr ChowKing's gaming theory.

 

its based on benchmarks already shown. noone is saying the 8770 is a bad card, its just a decent step lower than the 8870. Some of us would just rather wait on the better card with hopes to give this laptop a little more legs with future games (and current high end ones)

sidenote... half life 2 and witcher 2 are night and day comparisons. there is 7 years separating those 2 games. Anything nowadays (including low end integrated graphics cards) will be able to run half life 2 at high settings. Witcher 2 is pretty demanding actually, so its good to hear it runs well on that. What settings, and what kind of framerate are you getting?

 

OK, I just have to comment - the 8770 is rubbish on Guild Wars 2 on high settings (based on personal experience when I had the S01UB model). Granted, GW2 is a pretty tough game to run, especially when you do raids / dragon runs on high settings, but the benchmarks for the 8870 give much more promise. YMMV in whether to get one now with the 8770 or 8870. Personally, I can afford the wait (I wasn't really using the laptop every day) for what I would consider the better model.

(Besides, I hate buyer's remorse )

 

You want to play SimCity on High settings? I'll just tell you right now the 8770m WILL NOT do that. I have a MBPr with the 650m and it cannot handle SimCity at all well. I have many settings dialed a notch or two down from max and the resolution is at an abysmal 1280 x 720 and the only time I break 30FPS is when I'm just starting out a city. My biggest city full of skyscrapers and 120k citizens frequently dips below 20 and usually hovers in the mid 20's when just playing normally.

 

I was so close to getting the Best Buy/8770M model last week, but after seeing this 17 minute Battlefield 4 gameplay footage, the 8870M is a must for me now.

 

Response and Service Request History:

I understand that you are inquiring about the 8870M drivers for your Samsung laptop. If this is incorrect, please let me know as the information provided may change.

Please be advised that AMD offers a reference driver (as-is, limited support) for Mobility Radeon cards because laptop manufacturers will often optimize the laptop by adjusting certain capabilities or specifications of a graphics card to make sure that the entire laptop is running efficiently. As such, our reference drivers may not be compatible with your system. The AMD Mobility Radeon Driver Verification tool (found at AMD Catalyst) helps you determine your notebook’s compatibility with generic AMD Catalyst Mobility drivers. It helps to prevent incorrect installation on incompatible notebooks which may lead to disabled features or functionality. If your system is compatible with our drivers, the installation tool will then install them. If the driver is incompatible, an error will pop up recommending that you contact the laptop manufacturer for drivers, as they will be the exclusive source for drivers for your system, as well as for support installing these drivers.

The exception for this is found with Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba. They have asked that we not provide drivers for their laptops, as they will provide them through their own support pages. As such, you will need to contact your system builder to obtain the most recent drivers for your system. Similarly, if our drivers are determined to be incompatible (via an error message saying that your hardware is incompatible with our software), then you will have to contact your laptop manufacturer for any drivers as they will be the exclusive source for drivers for your system.

While we will offer Radeon 8xxxM drivers from AMD, it is unlikely that these will be compatible with your system as per Samsung's request to be the exclusive source for driver software for their hardware. The tool linked above will be the best way to get these installed when they are made available, but currently we have no 8xxxM drivers available, and it is unlikely that when we do make these available that they will be compatible with your system.

If you have any other questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reply to this e-mail directly and I will try to provide any additional information that you may require.

In order to update this service request, please respond, leaving the service request reference intact.

Best regards,

AMD Global Customer Care

 

i don't think you read my post properly, i was stating that 8770 can't run simcity on mid-high settings, which is exactly my point. 8870 on the other hand can deliver a "good enough" frame rate within the mid-high settings range, even in other demanding games like guildwars 2, planetside 2 etc.

What i'm trying to tell people is , no matter how painful the wait (trust me i know, i'm bleeding every day) , hold on for the 8870 version even if you're just "causal" gamer; 8770 just aint worth it. Or get the 17inch 8870 non-touchscreen version if your cool with the bulk and weight.

 

SimCity 2013 works perfectly well on the 8870 with all settings on their highest setting (High or Ultra) on Fullscreen 1080p, at 26 FPS. Knocking a few of the settings down a notch, this runs at >30FPS (not that you can really tell the difference with this game, IMHO!). I suspect a driver update will improve this further, as the fan hasn't really spun up since running this, so I suspect it's not really being challenged too much. Knocking the resolution lower, this rockets at 60FPS (I think the Max for this game)!

 

this was my concern all along with this notebook. I hate relying on a laptop manufacturer for video drivers. I would much rather go to the source, but we will be unable to. Expect delays in all drivers, and im sure samsung will skip a few. Also, how long will our support from Samsung go for these video drivers?

 

Terrible news really, that means we will be stuck with ATI drivers released through samsung for the 8870 & 8770 . I hate it when manufacturers go that route, it almost always ends up in outdated drivers and lack of regular updates. Why would Samsung even ask such a thing from ATI, very backward.

why can't they just be like nvidia where the drivers are always Independent of the manufacturer.

 

Somewhere on this post someone explained how to use a custom inf to install proper drivers.
I've always done this with my nvidia cards with no problem, don't see why there would be any here.

 

Looks like the Samsung Series 7 Chronos 15.6, 8770m is now being offered at Frys.

FRYS.com | Samsung

 

I'm hoping that Samsung release a updated version of the Chronos in Q3 this year with Haswell and an nvidia GT 750M.

Hopefully the Haswell CPU and the nvidia GPU reduce the power requirements which is currently limiting the performance.

A revision of the Chronos would also give Samsung a chance to tweak the PSU, keyboard backlight and the screen graininess issues that some people have reported.

 

That is uncomfortable for us, not sure why is this good for a manufacturer. Anyhow we will still able to install the newest drivers from AMD, but manually in the Device manager.

 

this was the same case with my HP Envy 14. There was a thread (in this same forum i believe) that would release custom drivers that would work for it. I relied on a custom driver within a forum thread FARRR more tham i ever did on HP. Very disconcerting actually for this notebook. It actually may push me to find an alternate laptop unfortunately

 

Repeat message!

Why AMD give infos about new 8700M-8800M boards without reference to good drivers?

 

Read last page

Sent from HTC HD2 with Tapatalk

 

Like Spybenj said, rammin772 already got the 13.3 beta drivers working on this machine. I'm sure there'll be experienced users enough out there like him who can get us the newest drivers.
Many companies stop developing software for their devices after a while but there always are people with great knowledge that provide us the newest updates.

A far fetched illustration: I own a not-so-popular Samsung phone that came with android 2.3 and Samsung refused to port the newer Android versions. Meanwhile I have a fully working android 4.0, 4.1, 4.2 available for my phone. All fully working and better than Samsung could ever make them themselves. I don't think bypassing AMD's "compatibility" check could ever be as hard as porting a ROM like that. I fully trust the community when Samsung fails us, like with my phone.

 

Damn you samsung for making up so many model numbers. This is the NP760Z5E-U01US with a 4 cell battery vs. NP780Z5E-U01US that bestbuy is selling with a 8 cell battery. Everything else seems to be the same as the bestbuy model. I don't even understand why they would sell a 4 cell version of this laptop, I thought the whole point of removing the DVD drive was to give room for more battery.

Where is my laptop already! I don't think I've ever had to chase so much for giving away my money before. Great business model samsung...

 

This is Series 5.

 

Woops, you are right. The touchscreen threw me off.

 

According to: Samsung showcases Series 7 Chronos, Series 7 Ultra and new Series 9 - NotebookCheck.net News

Considering that Haswell will soon be released in June: Haswell release date ahead of Computex? | News | PC Pro (some reports are saying may is even possible), I would be inclined to wait for an updated model. Here's my logic:

Mar 2012------------------------NOW----June 2013

If I buy now I am getting a processor that was released in march 2012 and is already over a year old. If I wait a few shorts months (reasonable to expect an updated series 7 model by June/July I'd guess) I will be at the forefront of latest tech. I know technology changes rapidly, but I try to be as wise as possible to avoid putting myself behind the times even sooner and purchasing at a non-ideal time.

 

Yes, but imagine how long it will take Samsung to release a laptop with a Haswell chip after intel relases those chips. If Intel releases haswell in june, it could easily be months before they make it into consumer products.

 

but my question is.... why when searching for a new laptop would you want to commit to a product that we will have to rely on a community for support on, when there are other options out there? i just hate that this is indeed the case with these video drivers. Video drivers change far more than any drivers... why would you lock AMD out of providing these updates and keep these on yourself.... or as you suggest, on your community?

 

Because no other notebook packs this much performance in such a beautiful thin package. I hate the way those companies work though.

 

The majority of companies do this, not just Samsung.

 

Please stop these discussions about drivers, we already know that there are several users that are using the beta drivers with no issues.
We only need to edit the INF file.


Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Actually not without any issues yet. Catalyst isn't there, or switchable graphics.

 

Hacking inf files doesn't add real support for 8870m
It may work but new hardware functions are left out.

 

It looks like a repeat of the Z5A driver. If any issues occur you are on your own.

 

True. Thanks to rammin772 I got 13.3 beta 3 working. With a lot of bugs though, no ccc or switchable graphics app either. Every icon in windows even turned negative after testing farcry 3, even in the metro interface . I only got 1-2 fps more in that game and quite a few in saint's row the third on ultra. It works for a bit but it's far from optimized for the 8870m.

 

Is there someone that believe that driver can bring a sensitive improve in performance?
Several years ago I have seen a drivers comparative for an ATI GPU, If i remember correctly they were drivers released in several years, the result was that the performance are not changed much, one of the driver with best performance was a old driver.
So if they release a driver every 6 months for me is not a issue, even because if is true that 8870m is an update of previous GPU generation means the drivers are already mature now.
Even if AMD promises a 10% of improvement with a new driver in a game with 25fps average this means that you can play @27fps and 10% is a super huge improvement for a driver improvement that maybe you will see only one time o maybe never in the life of a GPU.

 

Sorry if this has already been answered, but now that there is 434 pages it's a little much to dig through. Has it been determined what the US 15" model will be called that has the 8870m? I see in the UK it is the np77z5e-s01uk..

 

man, exactly the same driver nonsense as with Sony... I was so hoping to not have to deal with it. The problem is also that in a couple of years chances are newer software will either require newer drivers or run into problems with older drivers. I experienced that with a Sony Vaio and CUDA. Editing INF files was a pain in the , because the majority of the drivers would run into some kind of problem (from bluescreen to standby issues). This is seriously pushing me to at least wait for the Ativ Book 8 release and see what other machines will be released with the new 700 series (hoping for Asus here).

 

Ativ book 8 has the same hardware of Chronos 7.


Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

I worry more about driver support and samsung's customer support

 

I beginning to give up on the 8870m version being released in the USA. It's sad. This might just force me to wait till August for Windows Blue and Haswell.

 

No reason to give up.
It'll come out soon. But when it was announced they said it would come out between march and April. It's now April. We were lucky for it to come out with an 8770m before now.

 

omg omg omg just got available in Sweden, ill hopefully get it tomorrow, or on monday


Samsung 770Z5E 15.6" Full HD
Radeon HD8870, Core i7-3635QM, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Windows 8

 

Yes, GCN is new architecture, drivers need to be further optimized. The best example is Radeon 8750M, with earlier driver push only 1689 3DMark11, but now 1918 (in weaker system). I'm pretty confident there will be at least one more good speed bump.

 

Also just better overall support for newer games. Bugfixes are great to have besides performance improvements.

 

Guys, two questions:

1. About NP780Z5E-S01UB panel: is the touch screen panel glare or not? Any glass cover in case of glare panel or it's just a bare film?
Which panel's quality is better? In my opinion the gloss one should be brighter? Any reviews?
2. Seems that Best Buy version has 1GB of VRAM. Is it true and there should be another version with 2GB of VRAM?

Thank you!

 

For those of you in the UK looking for the PCWorld 8870m model, here's the response I received yesterday:


"Thank you for contacting us today. I would like to have called you but I was unable to locate a telephone number for you on our systems.

In regards to the Laptop, it will be coming back into stock on the 20th April and will only be available for home delivery, however there is only a limited amount coming into stock so I would recommend acting quickly.

I hope this answers your query.

Kind regards,

Thomas Garrod
The KNOWHOW™ Team
"

 

Thanks for posting that TroyBarlow, I was just about to write them an email myself. Were those stock predictions regarding their online store or a particular/local outlet?

It may also be worth mentioning, given that people have been talking about waitig for the Haswell chips, that they'll probably only be 10-15% faster, clock-for-clock, with a single-digit percentage improvement in power consumption. The real improvement will be for systems without discrete graphics cards (the move from HD4000 to HD4600 integrated graphics).

 

GCN is a new architecture?
Notebookcheck seems to have a different opinion:
AMD Radeon HD 8870M - NotebookCheck.net Tech
Also I did not know there were new official drivers for 8000 series, in fact if you see the result for 8870 in 3Dmark11 the score of 3200 is the same the actual driver allows then I don't know what it's the conditions of lower score.
In every case your interpretation of data about 8750m are wrong:
(you have to expand the results to see what I'm saying)
510R5E-S01DE passes from 1534 to 1689
530U4E-S02DE passes from 1796 to 1918
(There is no evidence that the performance difference is caused by two different drivers)

 

In my question to them I asked if any would be available in store any time soon, and I assume their response was for stock company-wide.

I wanted to pay for it with a US credit card I have, but they will only allow that in-store

 

I think that HD8870 performance will stay around same as it is now, even with new drivers. It simply is badly built by AMD. Otherwise they would have released a new driver by now.

 

They didn't release any 8xxxm driver yet. So you're implying that the whole 8000m series is badly built by AMD?